wealth for half a century-with worsening
arguments, and finally war.
The War of the Pacific, it was called: Chile
versus Bolivia and Peru. The conflict began
in 1879. Five years later Chile had won, and
the Atacama was hers. For the next four dec
ades the mineral was in great demand for
fertilizer and explosives. Nitrate provided a
major part of Chile's national income.
When synthetic nitrates made from the ni
trogen in the air were developed shortly be
fore World War I, they spelled the end of the
boom. Today most of the mines are silent, and
the settlements around them are ghost towns.
Alfonso, Patty, and I detoured off the main
road to visit one forlorn mining town, Cha
cabuco. More than 3,000 workers and their
families once lived here. Now only an aged
caretaker occupied the old company town.
Prowling Chacabuco's dusty streets, I
peered through dust-encrusted windows.
How austere the lives of its residents must
have been, I thought.
But not entirely austere. On the square I
found what must have been a saloon and
dance hall. A Wild West movie company
could have filmed it without a change.
We welcomed the sight of Calama, with
its promise of relief from the treeless desert.
There a vegetation-lined stream, the Rio Loa,
wound through the oasis on its way from the
Andes to the sea, and a modern CORFO-built
hotel nicely ended our day's drive.
A very large hole in the ground ten miles
from Calama, I knew, was bound up in world
controversy. The Chuquicamata Copper
Mine-"Chuqui" for short-had belonged to
the U.S.A.'s Anaconda Company until the
Allende government nationalized it and other
mines in 1971. Another ousted firm, the Ken
necott Copper Corporation, was bringing
suit in European courts and attaching Chilean
copper shipments, pending reimbursement for
the company's properties.
No Shortage of Hospitality
One such suit was in progress when I
visited Chuqui. Not surprisingly, the walls
near the mine were painted with anti-Ameri
can, pro-Marxist slogans. But my Chilean
hosts at the mine were careful to draw a dis
tinction between international affairs and
person-to-person contacts. I heard no dia
tribes against yanqui imperialists; instead,
they made my stay as informative and pleas
ant as possible. Always I've found it so, in
Chile. Politicians may flay Kennecott or In
ternational Telephone & Telegraph in speech
es, but a norteamericano traveling through
the land is treated as a guest.
Chile still managed to sell abroad as much
copper as it produced. But Chuqui, with
reduced capital and fewer technicians, was
seriously crippled. Machines sat idle; new
parts were nearly impossible to buy. As a
stopgap, the Chileans had converted a mine 455